Stop correctional officer abuse of inmates in Nassau County Correctional Center!

Imagine, your honor student is home from college for spring break. He goes out Friday night with a group of friends. One o clock in the morning you receive a call that your child is being held in the Nassau County jail for driving under the influence. Because it's the weekend, he won’t be arraigned until Monday morning. Before you can obtain a lawyer and get to court. You receive another call that you child is dead. DEAD, because he was beaten to death by the very officers that your tax money is used to pay their salary. Killed by the very people who were hired and sworn to uphold the law.

On November 8, 2012, I reported to several agency’s including,  Ms. Ford, Ms. Rice
District Attorney Office, Jason Starr Nassau County Chapter Director at New York Civil Liberties Union, Thomas E. Perez U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights James Ford Commissioner Nassau County Sheriff's Office, Michael J. Sposato and Mc Green       Sheriff’s department, Valerie Singleton, Attorney General, Eric T. Schneiderman Attorney General, Mr. Kenny State Commission of Correction, Sgt. Hutter the internal affairs Unit at the jail, among many other.

 

The report detailed the abuses that my was being subject to at the Nassau County Correctional facility. After  I reached out to the above agencies for help and protection, the guards have become more dangerous and abusive. Doing anything in their power to install fear to keep him and other inmates from speaking out against the abuses that are experiencing at the hands of the Correctional Officers. 

 

They are tormenting the inmates by slapping them in the face, pushing them around, tossing their cells apart, ripping up and throwing away personal supplies including legal mail, and trashing religous information. They are telling them that if they talk to anyone about what is going on in there, they will end up like Jerome Washington.

 

On February 14, 2013 Jerome Washington was beaten into a coma, by the hands of the Correctional officers at NCCC. If the above agencies would have taken my pleas seriously, this man would not be fighting for his life today. How many people have to die due to the hands of these inhumane, abusive, Correctional officers before someone takes me seriously! Please sign this petition so that we can make officials get in this jail and do something to save the lives of inmates being housed there. If I can get people to stand up and takes notice, then the Government will have to stop covering up and denying that this jail needs to be SHUT DOWN!

 

The following are accounts from several sources of other charges and complaints made against NCCC over the last decade:

 

 

Over 100 inmates have filed complaints against prison guards at the Nassau County jail in Garden City, Long Island over the past eight years, according to a report in the New York Times. The report is based on information obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the newspaper after the death of Thomas Pizzuto, an inmate who was beaten to death by prison guards on January 13.

Correctional Officer, Mark Barber, 47, of Levittown, was arrested and charged with three counts of Rape in the Third Degree, 10 counts of Sexual Abuse in the Second Degree, three counts of Forcible Touching, Receiving Reward for Official Misconduct in the Second Degree, six counts of Promoting Prison Contraband in the Second Degree, and 35 counts of Official Misconduct. From approximately August 2007 through March 2009, Barber, acting in his capacity as a grievance officer for the Nassau County Correctional Center’s (NCCC) female inmate population, engaged in various ongoing, inappropriate relationships with female inmates. These relationships ranged from providing cigarettes and private phone calls to engaging in various levels of sexual activity with select inmates.

In 1999 a veteran Nassau County jail guard was found liable for the beating of a mentally retarded inmate, Nassau officials abruptly agreed yesterday to pay the former inmate $500,000 to settle his civil rights lawsuit against the county.

Two Nassau County, New York jail guards pled guilty on January 12 in the 1999 beating death of 38-year-old Thomas Pizzuto, a prisoner who was serving a 90-day sentence for a traffic violation. The two guards, Edward Velazquez, 32, and Patrick Regnier, 36, admitted their crime in the Federal District Court in Uniondale, New York.

In the eight years before this incident, more than 100 inmates have stated that they were mistreated in the facility. Last March, another guard was found responsible for the 1993 beating of a retarded inmate with a frying pan.

More than 200 complaints from people incarcerated at the jail about the failure to provide necessary medication, the mistreatment of persons with disabilities and the utter lack of mental health services at the jail. The number of complaints has escalated dramatically since the county hired a private contractor to provide medical and mental health care at the jail. Many of these complaints point to the facility’s inadequate grievance system.